>> ^Memorare:
To witness the noble virtues of pure unregulated free market capitalism firsthand, all one need do is visit the only place it's practiced today: the ghetto street corner. The ebb and flow of goods and services is self-regulating, guided by whoever is most viscious, most ruthless, most willing to murder the competition and/or anyone else who gets in the way.
Seriously, you lemonade stand academics need to venture out into the real world occasionally and see how working class people suffer terribly under your beloved free market capitalist abomination.


I know what you mean, but you ignore the fact that the "ghetto" doesn't have any policing, and the "goods" and "services" are illegal and mafia controlled, instead of governed by the rule of law.

Legalise drugs and prostitution, and your "ghetto" will be a marble covered shopping mall in about 10 days.

You're very ignorant if you think that everyone has the same rights and opportunities. And degrading attitudes about women still exist today. The stereotypes that label men as rational, strong, decisive, and protective and women as emotional (irrational), submissive, weak, and nurturing are still very much alive. Just look at the top sifts of all time:
1. A very talented MAN playing the ukelele
2. Two talented BOYS' well-made lightsaber video
3. Autistic BOY being awesome at a b-ball game
4. Talented MALE robot dancer
5. Prairie Dog, generally accepted as MALE. Thus: Drama KING
6. Very clever rant about Pachebel. Again, a talented and clever MAN.
7. FINALLY, an intelligent WOMAN with integrity. But, wait! She's also very beautiful. Do you think this would be the #7 sift if she hadn't been so gorgeous? I don't think so. Listen to some of the comments:
"Plus, uhmm - she's like a hot Christiane Amanpour. But I like her integrity too."
"She's 40% Kylie Minogue and 60% Naomi Watts."
"...Plus, shes hot."
"Is there anything better than a hot, articulate, angry blonde ... I don't think so."
"Lara Logan is hot. Not only is she drop dead pretty, she is smart, she has an acerbic tongue and she tells the truth. Lately, she has been wearing tight tops with a push-up bra that really make her tits looks great. More Iraq stories, please............"
"shes hot and reaaaaaaly intelligent..."
"I want this woman to have my children."
"Lara Logan, will you marry me?"

I give major props to the guys of videosift for focusing FAR more on her integrity, intelligence, and how articulate she is. They really were very good about that. But I really, really think that a lot of those votes had everything to do with the COMBINATION of brains and looks. If this had been an ugly woman, it would not have received NEARLY as many votes, I'd bet you anything. Moving on.

8. Awesome commercial. The wind is a tall MAN doing funny things. Love this sift.
9. Drug spiders. MALE spiders (Mr. Crack Spider, etc.), Male narrator.
10. Quantum Physics narrated and explained by a MALE scientist.
11. Clever prank, talented FEMALES. (Yay!) All old/overweight women are the ones being tricked, all beautiful and young females are the tricksters. Some sample comments:
"...also, they were hot."
"Those twins could prank me in the bathroom anytime."
"Twin hot German chicks in a bathroom is guaranteed to make #1."

Again, the majority of the comments had nothing to do with the way the girls looked, but on the prank itself. Cool. Movin on.

12. Jon Stewart (MAN) being funny and clever and awesome.
13. A pretty GIRL with a great bod doing something pretty cool. Comments:

"She can spin on my escalator any day she likes."
"This is cool and I think it's pure science. For example, it would be interesting also to rub her down in various oils and see how it affects the results. Or underwear versus no underwear for example. What would happen?"
"She's a hottie."
"oh and this is *nature too because humans are part of nature.
and *sexuality because those tight jeans make her look sexy to me."
"I predict a chubby girl stuck between the glass railings of a shopping mall escalator near you."
"Indeed, perhaps she will leave a trail of freshly erected posts behind her as she spins her way from town to town."
"I suspect she already left a trail of freshly erected posts, both at the original venue and among some of the male sift viewers judging by the comments."
"Videosift seems to have an immense fondness for rotating women."
"You males are all full of bull putty. If this was a 15 year old pimply faced fella doing this it have about 20 votes and an eia tag immediately."

14. Dolphins blowing bubbles
15. Cool music video. MALE band, MALE hands.

Most people see the world through the eyes of a man and they don't even know it. Men look, women are looked upon.

Top Box-Office Movies of all time: (I'm going to point out the gender of JUST the main character (protagonist).

Titanic (1997)- As far as I can tell, not having seen the movie, the MALE/FEMALE share the main character spot.
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Male
Shrek 2 (2004) - Male
E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)- Male
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Male/Female?
Spider-Man (2002) - Male
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)- Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)- Male
Spider-Man 2 (2004) - Male
The Passion of the Christ (2004)- Male
Jurassic Park (1993) - Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)- Male
Finding Nemo (2003) - Male
Spider-Man 3 (2007) - Male
Forrest Gump (1994) - Male
The Lion King (1994) - Male
Shrek the Third (2007) - Male
Transformers (2007) - Male
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) - Male
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) - Male
Iron Man (2008) - Male
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) - Male
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - Male
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Male
Independence Day (1996) - Male
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) - Male
The Sixth Sense (1999) - Male
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) - Male
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) Male/Female
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - Male
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) - Male
Home Alone (1990) - Male
The Matrix Reloaded (2003) - Male
Meet the Fockers (2004) - Male
Shrek (2001) - Male
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - Male
The Incredibles (2004) - Male
Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) - Male

I could keep going, but I think you get the picture.

In reply to this comment by Shepppard:
Alright, this is a video of someone doing what they love.
I don't understand the controversy. Just because I watched this doesn't make me think of a woman as an object. I see her dancing, and I see her doing something she loves to do. I'm not sitting here thinking "I'd hit that so hard she'd walk funny for a week" I'm actually sitting here enjoying it because it's a dance.

People need to seriously reconsider what they want to pick fights with. Society on the whole has come to terms of equality. Black, White, Yellow, Purple, brown, male or female, everybody has equal rights and opportunities.
No race is better then the other, and same goes for the Sexes.

People don't treat women as brainless objects anymore. You can vote, you can drive, you can work, the only thing you can't do is pee standing up. People have accepted that women are NOT objects anymore, and therefore can actually watch something like this and appreciate it as art.

Because we (at least not all of us), don't have our head in the gutter anymore and can accept it.

"I predict a chubby girl stuck between the glass railings of a shopping mall escalator near you. Or a guy." via
http://www.videosift.com/video/Girl-spins-on-escalator
It's good to be right. I don't think erecting a pole would have helped here, either.

I predict a chubby girl stuck between the glass railings of a shopping mall escalator near you. Or a guy. Either that, or they will erect a post or raised barrier between them to stop you from doing that.
-this video sift submission qualifies as awesome. Props to the poster.

scary stuff *shudder*

reminds me of my ex-wife, wandering around a shopping mall, looking for prey. When she targeted a new pair of designer shoes, the outcome was certain.

In my opinion, the pro-war/pro-torture position simply does not hang together. If you are pro-war (and not in the military) you are essentially asking other people to sacrifice their lives and limbs for some shared ideals. And what are these ideals? Let's assume they include good stuff, like freedom and all that, and that they probably do not include torture and other behavior associated with "evil doers".

The pro-torture argument is that if we can save some innocent life by torturing an evil-doer who probably deserves it then that's fine--especially if it keeps a bomb from going off in my local shopping mall. Ideals be damned.

Put these together and you get Romney's position: "Let's sacrifice our ideals if it'll save my ass, but lets defend them to the death if it just costs yours."

So it's all flags and handshakes now, but once one of these guys gets elected, it's all about taking care of number one. And number 1 ain't you--you ain't even number 2. (RIPFZ)

Comments from his former common-law partner, and from other Poles:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=021c49f2-2074-46ff-8997-5f83e66110ba&k=51707


Dubon's analysis, while rambling and alcohol-blurred, was in many ways consistent with that of one of Poland's best-known psychiatrists.

Stanislaw Telesniski, who specializes in courtroom testimony in nearby Krakow, told CanWest News Service that Dziekanski was obviously weakened by fatigue, hunger, fear, nicotine deprivation, and panic over an inability to speak any English.

"All those things make the self-defence system weaker," said Telesniski, who analyzed the video for TVN-24, Poland's largest private television network.

"And you're starting to be more intuitive, like an animal. And after a while you feel you are surrounded by animals, because your rational way of thinking has been stopped because of stress.

"In that state of mind there is a disintegration of your personality, and you start to be aggressive and irrational, behaving in a way no one around you can understand.

"And aggression is one of the ways of communicating to people and showing the sign that something's wrong with you."

He said the four RCMP officers made a fundamental mistake when they approached him aggressively and sent jolts of electricity through his adrenalin-charged body.

"They should have been trained to deal with this situation, and the first rule is to become his friend as fast as possible, and not increase his stress more and more. Make him calm."

Most Poles interviewed in a shopping mall in the nearby city of Katowice, in the heart of Poland's once powerful coal-mining industry about 70 kilometres north of the Czech Republic, agreed that the police were brutally quick.

Several also said the incident has affected their previous view of Canada as a peaceful country.

"You expect something like that in America, but not in Canada," said Adrian Wawrzynczak, 31, a clothing store manager.


BTW, the "once powerful" part is lame writing - it rather still is, especially considering world energy prices.

Marketing aimed at children, whether it be for food, clothes, toys or anything else they consume, is worth billions and so it is also very powerful.

I believe it is the role of a parent to protect their children from this.

Not having t.v. goes a long way and children benefit from making use of t.v. time in other ways, enormously.

Staying away from shopping malls, unless it's a real necessity, also helps. Kids always want what they can see. We could come away from every toy store we entered, having spent hundreds of dollars, if we agreed to every request while we were in there. Nine times out of ten, the requests don't continue after we've left, after we've said no, as compelling as they may be while we're in the store.

Choosing clothes with kids doesn't have to be a battle ground. Be creative with how you phrase what your boundaries are with clothes. You can be in control without coming off as a tyrant.

Talk to girls about image and media and how media manipulates kids into buying stuff they don't need. They get it.

The college girls legacy mentioned aside, I don't think any woman who considers herself a feminist thinks that looking sexy is going to improve her ability to express herself.

Being a feminist, for me, means that I understand the conditioning that I have been raised in, which defines my role as a woman, mother, wife and lover and rejecting or accepting any of those roles, consciously, according to whether they work for me, in becoming a fully realised human being.

Klaipeda University in Lithuania is basically a shopping mall with some classrooms stuck on the side, they couldn't afford a new building on their own. I don't think that educating your nation's future in a shopping mall is the way things are supposed to be.

apparently someone thought this would be a good idea to try out for real: http://www.videosift.com/video/SUV-Plows-Through-Shopping-Mall-No-Sound

shaking old-man canes at skateboarders = old and busted.
new hotness = shaking old-man cane at those kids in shopping malls with the shoes with the wheels in them.

Farhad, it's bullshit because accidental deaths of people standing nearby people who are actively firing on Israeli troops are not as bad as suicide bombings in shopping malls that are actively intended to kill a lot of innocents. Israel has not advocated slaughtering noncombatants, although several dictators of predominantly Muslim countries in the region have. Whether or not these dictators represent their people, something is wrong with a culture that allows such evil into a position of power. How many Rabbis and Ministers issued death threats on nonviolent cartoonists and writers lately? Whether or not it's a correct interpretation of scripture, some radical Muslim fanatics are doing everything in their power to squash free speech and other civil liberties. This is an outrage that needs to be met head on by moderate Muslims and everyone else with sense.
(disclaimer about the splinter in someone else's eye versus the log in your own...)

South Carolina luvs gulags.

Brit Hume is not brave enough to ask whether any of them would support domestic internment camps along with all torture of those who could be possible suspects (the mostly likely scenario) in the FOX '24' shopping mall bomb fantasy.

But I like watching when Republicans play-act tough. Sharpen those 9-irons, boys (McCain excluded)

Great post!

I have friends who helped with their legal fight for return. The case really exposed a very nasty, cruel and uncaring side of the British government.

Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger 10/11/04 - 'The Guardian'

"There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." "


Finally in 2006 Lord Justice Hooper and Mr Justice Cresswell ruled that orders made under the royal prerogative to prevent the return of the Chagos islanders to their homes were unlawful. They described as "repugnant" the action to exile the population of the islands. "The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an order in council, exile a whole population from a British overseas territory and claim that he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the territory is, to us, repugnant," the judges said.

But the government are appealing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6333223.stm) and the right of return is still being denied!

(sorry for long post - but this one really gets to me!)

Farhad

Regulation of the Islamic financial sector was a problem in the past, but there has been a lot of effort made in recent years to effectively regulate the industry. Most states with large Islamic financial sectors - such as the UAE, or Britain, have passed regulatory legislation in the last few year. There have also been concerns that what constitutes Shari'ah complient financing (and accounting) varies dramatically between banks and countries. There is now a major project being carried out to harmonize standards between banks and countries and to establish one authoritative fiqh body whose rulings are decisive.

It's interesting what you say about loans in the Gulf. Under most traditional Islamic loan contracts the borrower can only borrow if there is a clear business plan. Furthermore, if the borrower is negligent in his dealings he is liable for the losses and the bank is unlikely to lend again - even to the man's wife.

"the last thing the gulf needs is more hotels, shopping malls and bloody coffeehouses" - couldn't agree more! But there are some signs that they are now starting to invest in music and the arts.